The policy has more explicit social provisions. In some areas, the EBRD’s requirements exceed IFC’s requirements. This includes EBRD’s reference to obtain a “consent” where operations are located in areas with indigenous populations. Reflecting its membership, EBRD also refers to a number of European provisions related to the Aarhus Convention on Public Participation and the EU EIA Directive.

These Regulations amend the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999 (the 1999 Regulations”) so that they apply to applications for subsequent approval of matters under conditions attached to planning permissions.

In 2006, the House of Lords and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the UK had failed to transpose the EIA Directive correctly, because the Regulations implementing the EIA Directive allowed only for EIA before the grant of outline planning permission and not at the later stage when reserved matters were approved.

The ECJ ruled that where development cannot be carried out until details relating to reserved matters are approved by a local planning authority, the decisions to grant outline planning permission and to approve the reserved matters must be considered to constitute, as a whole, a multi-stage development consent for the purposes of the EIA Directive. If it became apparent during the course of the second stage that the project was likely to have significant effects on the environment (for example, where those effects were not identifiable until then) then an environmental impact assessment was required. Since the Regulations then in force did not allow for EIA to be required at that stage, they did not fully implement the EIA Directive.

These Regulations amend the 1999 Regulations to close the loophole identified by the ECJ. As well as applying to applications for approval or reserved matters and other matters under a condition, they also apply to ROMP (review of mineral permissions) applications.

A single project cannot be divided into smaller parts to avoid thresholds.

The scheme must be sufficiently fixed to allow adequate assessment of the environmental impacts.

Information relating to potentially significant impacts should be made available at the time of the decision. Conditioning surveys is not sufficient unless this is accompanied by mitigation to prevent significant impacts.

ES should be self contained.

European Court

In some cases EIA can be required at the reserve matters stage (R-v-London Borough of Bromley, ex parte Barker)

The EIA Directive should have a “wide scope and broad purpose” in it’s application.

Risk in Project Finance

This site considers current news, key issues, articles, and new regulatory and guidance information from different viewpoints, including banks, legal firms, project sponsors, consultancies and NGOs in order to provide a wide spectrum of opinions.
In order to demonstrate why risk management so important, the site provides information and conflicting opinions from those who support and oppose the finance of key project. It also includes an evaluation of the different views on the various management techniques.

Financial Institutions

The various approaches and guidelines have provided invaluable risk management tools for Financial Institutions, and while there will always be critics of some of the finer details, the overall benefits have been overwhelming and far reaching. The banks have shown a highly impressive degree of co-operation and innovation in their approach to environmental and social risk management.